Home » Latest » Outdoors » Scottish Rasta Wanny’s Yard Tour! Mokko’s Neighbour in Jamaica

Scottish Rasta Wanny’s Yard Tour! Mokko’s Neighbour in Jamaica

10

InfoSearched 173 0 Outdoors

9.9

SaveSavedRemoved 0

A Scottish expat traded Glasgow for a jungle plot in rural Jamaica, and eight years later he’s still clearing it by hand.

The latest episode of Ras Kitchen — the Ital cooking and culture series hosted by Matthew and his neighbor, chef Mokko — heads next door to meet Wanny, a Scotland-born Rastafarian also known as Ras Fyah or “Yah Is Real.” Wanny bought his patch of jungle bordering Mokko’s yard back in 2012 and has spent the years since carving out a strictly Ital, vegan life on land that didn’t want to give up easily. Matthew and Mokko walk the property with him, talking real estate, food, and the daily grind of building in dense tropical bush.

• Wanny, originally from Scotland, purchased his rural Jamaican land adjacent to Mokko’s yard in 2012.
• The episode covers the practical realities and legalities of an outsider buying rural property in Jamaica.
• Wanny demonstrates his Ital and vegan approach to food, including his own ackee recipes, while Matthew and Mokko join him and yard resident Ratty for tree climbing and handstands around the property.

From Glasgow to the Jungle

Wanny’s story is the spine of the episode — a Scotsman who left behind whatever he had going in Scotland to settle into rural Jamaican life under the “Yah Is Real” name he now goes by. Matthew and Mokko use the visit to press him on the parts of that transition most viewers never see: how a foreigner actually goes about buying land in the Jamaican countryside, what the paperwork and legal process looks like, and what it takes to hold onto a piece of jungle once it’s yours. Wanny has had his plot since 2012, long enough that the conversation isn’t theoretical — he’s lived through every stage of it.

Clearing the Bush the Hard Way

Buying the land, it turns out, was the easy part. The tour spends real time on the physical grind of trying to build anything inside dense tropical growth — cutting back bush that regrows almost as fast as it’s cleared, dealing with terrain that resists every shortcut, and the general trial-and-error of putting up structures where the jungle has final say. It’s the kind of detail that separates a real homesteading account from a postcard version of “island living.”

Strictly Ital, Strictly Vegan

Food is where Wanny’s discipline really shows. He walks Matthew and Mokko through his Ital and vegan practice, including his own take on ackee preparation — a staple of Jamaican cooking usually paired with saltfish, here reworked entirely within Rasta dietary principles that avoid meat, salt, and processed additions. For a series built around Mokko’s cooking, having a neighbor who takes the Ital code even further gives the episode a natural point of comparison.

Bless up, Matthew & Mokko.

That’s how the hosts sign off the episode, and it fits the whole tone of the visit — low-key, neighborly, more interested in showing how Wanny actually lives than dramatizing it. Anyone curious about how far off the beaten path Jamaica’s rural interior really runs might also look at Discover Jamaica’s Most Dangerous Areas: Tivoli & Trench Town, Kingston for the flip side of the island’s reputation, or check out Living a Radically Simple Permaculture Life on 1/4 Acre for another take on stripping life down to what the land can actually provide.

Handstands With Ratty

The episode doesn’t stay serious for long. Once the property tour and the food talk wind down, Matthew, Mokko, and yard resident Ratty turn the visit into a straight-up hangout — climbing trees and trading handstands around Wanny’s cleared ground. It’s a small, unscripted stretch, but it’s exactly the kind of moment that’s kept Ras Kitchen going: less a travel segment, more a hang with people who happen to live somewhere most viewers will never get to.

Wanny’s yard sits right next door to Mokko’s, so if this episode left anyone wanting more of the property, the rest of Ras Kitchen‘s back catalog is basically a walking tour of that same stretch of bush — just with Mokko doing the cooking instead of the ackee lesson.